


Shit. Let’s Build A Fort

by labyrinthineRetribution



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Black Dave Strider, Filipino Karkat Vantas, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humanstuck, M/M, POV Karkat Vantas, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Trans Character, and they were roommates dskjgndsa, yeah it counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 03:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20251804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labyrinthineRetribution/pseuds/labyrinthineRetribution
Summary: Karkat Vantas has one and only one solace in the never ending nightmare that is his life. Let's take that away shall we?





	Shit. Let’s Build A Fort

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by https://thatneoncrisis.tumblr.com/post/187017502023/oneshot-prompt-where-dave-and-karkat-have-a-huge THIS prompt on my tumblr dot com hell yeah sam youre the only motherfucker who can handle me and youve rubbed off on me pinoy karkat rights

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you are absolutely convinced the universe has bets placed on how quickly it can fuck you over.

You’ve been hauling ass in what has to be one of the worst storms in the past decade, freezing your dick off because someone wise guy picked today of all days to steal your motherfucking jacket. All signs pointed to Vriska because when is she not using your misery for her personal misery for entertainment, and the rotten cherry on top of this shit tier cake is that your jacket coincidentally had your goddamn bus pass in it. Luckily, your wallet had been in your cargo pants so you didn’t have to worry about identity theft or some other bizarre fucked up occurrence but you were flat broke, damn that nine dollar, half rotten meatball sub from your lunch straight to the ninth circle of the netherworld where they had certainly gotten those nasty ass ingredients. The point being, a cab was completely out of the question.

Holy shit did you need to get your license.

As you run, bone chilling raindrops mercilessly beating down on your husk of a body while you booked it back to your shithole apartment, you thought about the evening’s plans. As soon as you got home, they would need a goddamn crowbar to separate your second rate ass from the busted couch. Oh, how you yearned for central heating, for burnt popcorn and a stable internet connection. It was movie night, and it was finally your fucking turn to pick.

Movie night was you and your roommate’s official compromise for TV privileges. The biweekly (as in every other week, not twice a week, why in the empty headed fuck those two very distinct things were the same word will forever be beyond your comprehension) cinema fest and quickly become the only thing you had to look forward to even marginally, as your work schedule was, for lack of a better term, a completely and utterly fucking worthless shit show. The last fight you two had gotten into over it had ended with a broken coffee table and the tattered shards of your dignity. With this arrangement, you both had equal opportunity to make the other suffer at the hands of your individual, yet equally unbearable taste in cinema. As a bonus, it also ended up kind of lessening the tension that comes with sharing a one room apartment with a pompous douchenozzle.

Somehow, your bastard of a roommate had managed to pick the last three movies, each of them suitably atrocious in their own special way. You had nearly threatened to bite off that twerp’s fingers if he had so much as looked at that goddamn remote. You had a cool six hours of the sappiest, most unapologetic romcoms cued up and ready to go. The uncultured, underdeveloped, squirming lump he called a brain wouldn’t be able to handle the horrorshow you had planned. It was like he was actively allergic to any form of intimacy. 

Well, it wasn’t like you were any better. But at least you weren’t such an unbelievable tool about it.

You round the final corner and finally reach the safe haven of your apartment complex. You lean against a wall and wheeze for a good few moments, allowing your heart to dislodge itself from your throat. Water streams from your greasy hair and down into your face. Your binder slices into your chest and making the process of not dropping unconscious right then and there near impossible. Colored spots swim in your vison as you try not to fucking vomit. Jesus, when was the last time you ran that much? Hell, when was the last time you ran, period. You notice the absence of lights from any of the windows. Maybe they all tried sleeping a little earlier, since the goddamn racket this bullshit hurricane was making meant sleeping soundly was completely out of the question.

You make your way inside and head over to the elevator, slamming the button and whipping out your phone to alert your roommate to your arrival.

No signal. Oh what in the mouth shitting dunderfuck happened?

You wait a few more minutes for the elevator to come down, growing more agitated with each passing moment. Your annoyance manifests itself into aggressively pounding the Up button until you hear a throat clearing behind you.

Oh great, not this clown.

“What the fuck do you want Makara?” you snarl.

“You might wanna all up and take it easy on the motherfuckin’ button there, my good bitch.”

“Shut your goddamn trap, I’m pretty fucking certain I know how to use this shitty elevator, it’s not like I haven’t lived here for the better part of two years.”

You resume your violent button mashing. Gamzee looks over your shoulder. Nosy fuck.

“Do you need something?”

“Just wonderin’ why your all up and gettin’ pissy over a broken elevator bro.”

Wait. What the fuck did he just say? You feel every nerve in your body go absolutely batshit, and you weren’t too far behind them.

“What the FUCK did you just say?”

“Well, I was just sayin’ how the power up and went out a few motherfuckin’ hours ago, so the fuckin’ elevator probs wouldn’t-”

You don’t stick around to hear the rest of that mangled sentence struggle to escape what was left of Makara’s hollowed brain. You dash around the corner and force yourself to run all the way up to the 5th floor, cursing your garbage, weak ass legs, cursing the fact you were too poor to order a second, less garbage binder, cursing how you were going to feel this shit in the morning, and cursing the sick motherfucker who gave this building five goddamned floors.

You nearly slam into your door at the far end of the hallway and fumble with your keys in the dark, oh shit, oh fuck, oh hell fucking no, not today please for the love of every cock guzzling, shit spewing-

Your heart sinks. The apartment is pitch black, not a single blinking light from the TV, laptop, or any number of assorted electronics you two had strewn about the about the apartment. You give a strangled, hollow sigh of complete exhaustion and defeat and light your phone’s flashlight so you don’t crack your skull open from tripping over a spare comic book or jumbled wires. As you shut the door behind you, you hear a shuffling noise from behind, you whip around and your pathetic light falls on the wiry pile of red, white, and black you’ve come to know as your roommate and reluctant ‘friend’.

He smirks at you. You wanted to rip that smile off his face and shove it up his ass with a rusty fork.

“Sup Vantas.”

“Fuck off,” you spit out, though your disdain for him had grown more preformative over the years, “I need to change out of these damn clothes before I contract hypothermia.”

He goes quiet for a moment, you assume to look you over, a task which would have already been quite difficult given the light situation, but his insistence on his goofy shades just made the whole process pants-shittingly infuriating.

“Why didn’t you call a cab?”  
You don’t dignify his ignorant question with an answer and opt to make your way over to the kitchen. You were fucking starving from the impromptue two mile dash. The food options are severely limited though, nearly everything in your freezer required a microwave to make palatable. You consider the leftover turon saba you had made a few weeks back, but once again, the dessert was nearly worthless when freezing cold. The matter had only been made worse when you realized the fridge had lost a good amount of power and they were now lukewarm pieces of shit. You let out a groan and slam the fridge.

“All good over there?” Dave shouts from the couch. You let out another, louder groan as an answer. Literally the only thing that helped you take your mind off the festering piece of trash your twenties had become had become yet another, slightly smaller festering piece of trash. You deal with the issue like any other adult, and have a good solid power sob in the shower as you contemplate how fucking miserable you had become, and the general ‘everything is crumbling around me and I’m powerless to stop it’ vibe that had enveloped you.

When you finally drag yourself from the shower, you notice Dave had lit some candles. Like, a shit ton of them. You're slightly concerned about the impending fire hazard.

“Jesus H. Christ, did you try summoning a demon on our asses while I was in there?”

Dave gives a little snort.

“That would be my sister’s area of expertise dude,” he retorts, “Just trying to bring the visibility back from negative 69.” Now it was your turn to laugh.

“Maybe you wouldn’t have such an issue if you would take those fugly sunglasses off your butterface for once in your life Dave.”

“No can do Karkarrot, I’ve committed to an aesthetic and this is the hill I die on.”

“You’ve chosen one of the most mindbogglingly stupid hills to die on, but at this point I’m just glad your dead. Later, windbag.”

Dave quickly sits up from his most likely staged position of casual lounging on the couch.

“Shit, you’re really turning in this early?”

You roll your eyes. “Dave, literally the only thing that gives me any semblance of joy is out of commission for God knows how fucking long, so I’m phoning this whole night in. It’s been real, I’m gonna go pass out and pray I don’t wake up.” 

You turn to leave again as Dave quickly stands up.

“Hey, well… you don’t have to,” he blurts out “I mean, we could do something else man, the night isn’t a total goddamn bust, we could figure something out.”

You narrow your eyes as you stare him down. He’s fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. 

“What the fuck are you playing at?”

He holds up his hands defensively. “No games here dude, just jonesin’ for some casual platonic intimacy with the only human being I get to see on a regular basis. It’s not like you were the only asshole around here looking forward the grease stained garbage fest known among us as Movie Night.”

“I thought you, and I quote, ‘would rather eat flaming rabbit shit for every breakfast then sit through another boring, predictable, glitter encrusted shit show that I pass off as cinema, hoping that the mere appearance of Jennifer Garner will distract from the fact that these movies are more shallow than a piss soaked kiddie pool,’” you say, cocking an eyebrow.

“I mean, yeah, I still completely stand by that, mama didn’t raise no hypocrite and all that, but she did raise a loser with ironic t-shirts as a substitute for social skills, so it’s not like I’m leaving the house to go party it up, and I’d rather not sit here in the dark for the next couple of hours by myself, so you wanna like, hang out. I guess.”

He phrased it more like a general statement more than an actual invitation for the two of you to sit on your asses in the dark, staring at each other in the candlelight.

“Hey jackass, thanks for the subpar hang out invite, but it’s gonna take more than your winning personality to get me to hang out with you in the dark for no real goddamn reason.”

“You wanna build a fort?”

Ok, you’ll admit. You were not expecting that.

“... How fucking old are you?”

“No bro, I’m like dead fucking serious, just here me out,” he says, flitting around the room, scooping up unsuspecting blankets and pillows like he was made just for this sort of bullshit. He scoots over to you and thrust them into your arms, “Just think about it man, we can build a kickass pillow fort, like some premium bougie shit, I got like a shit ton of snacks in my half of the closet from my job, we could just like, kick the shit and read for a while or talk or whatever. Just some unadulterated slumber party pillow talk garbage, I am completely willing and prepared to go all the way with this shit man.”

“I don’t think-”

He grips your shoulders and looks you dead in the eyes (you think, still impossible to tell), “Karkat. Dude. Have some fucking fun for once in your miserable life. I have stale movie theater popcorn in my bag.”

He’s won this round.

“You’re just lucky your jobs popcorn is still half decent when it’s stale.”

“Haha, nice.”

You two dickheads then spend the better part of two hours trying to set up a half decent pillow fort, as apparently neither of you had done it in your youths. The end result is something of a mess, you both had mad dashed to your shared room and ripped the clothes, covers, sheets and pillows off your beds and even to the damn kitchen to get chairs to help somewhat with the structural integrity. Dave had even scrounged up some battery powered fairy lights to help give it “some much needed bitchin’ flare” as he put it. You said it only added to the fire hazard issue you had mentioned earlier.  
It’s closer to a massive pile of garbage spread throughout the living room, but neither of you minded. You had even managed to find some shitty keychain flashlights and just started fucking around. Dave whipped out his old ipod and let it cycle through his ‘edgy’ thirteen year old’s self playlist. It was fucking abominable, but the worst part was that you loved each and every song on it, You read, he drew, you both talked about how fucked up your lives had gotten. He asked about your barely respectable job you asked about his barely respectable graphic design course. At one point you just started yelling out random shit for him to sketch and he did it, no questions asked. With your guidance, that sketchbook soon acquired its finest piece of shit yet.

It feels somewhere around two in the morning when you can barely keep your eyes open. You shovel another handful of stale popcorn into your mouth, fuck were you hungry, and rest your head on Dave’s shoulder. He tenses up for a moment and looks down at you, his stupid curly, bleached hair and dark skin illuminated by the beyond shitty lighting. Fuck him for looking this good in this shit level lighting.

“Is the dumb baby ready to go to sleep?”

“Actually fucknuts, I was ready four hours ago. If I get fired for passing out while reshelving, that’s on your ass.”

He shrugs and pops another kernel into his mouth, “Fair enough.” He pauses.

“Hey Karkat?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna have another bullshit sleepover sometime?”

You think for a few seconds.

“I wouldn’t hate it.”

“Nice.”

You both pass out in a tangle of limbs and snack wrappers. You would have to have your intestines pulled through your ass before admitting how nice it felt.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope yall enjoyed writing for karkat is a privilege and a curse what a bastard


End file.
